I did my best to angle toward her. Karalti grew larger and larger, until I was sure I was about to collide with her neck and bounce off... but instead, I shot by her head and desperately flung all my limbs out to catch her arm. The shock of impact rattled my teeth, but I caught on and held on - with Spider Climb. Suri was clutched in the other hand, pale with shock. I gave her a cheesy thumbs-up, then scurried up my dragon’s shoulder and onto her back. I had never been happier to see a pair of saddle straps.
“Hold on! Evasive maneuvers!” Karalti dipped a wing and plummeted into a side-ward dive. I heard Suri scream, and looked back to see Vash clinging to anything he could. Karalti rolled out of the way of the quazi who shot by her. She burned precious mana to Split Turn, changing direction in the air like a swallow, and winged her way toward the desert.
“Can you outlast them?” I faced backwards to watch the enemies as they strove to catch up.
“Maybe.” She was so hot the leather saddle felt gummy, her chest heaving. “If we can’t shake these quazi, it’s a toss-up whether I’ll run out of stamina or mana first.”
I checked her sheet and grimaced. She was at eighty-one out of over three hundred. The Teleport spell cost 50 points: according to what I’d read on the Archemiwiki, if she got below 10% mana, she was at risk of passing out or losing control while in flight due to a lapse in blood pressure, and guaranteed to pass out at 0%. And given I’d managed to fuck up a summoning with a 60% chance of success…
“Teleport to Kalla Sahasi,” I said. “But try to come in low.”
Chapter 43
We appeared low to the ground in Kalla Sahasi, which was just as well. Karalti landed at a run and tripped forward a couple of steps before sagging to lean against the gatehouse. She panted hot clouds of steam around Jacob the Architect, who hung from her mouth like a ragdoll.
“You... need to... take him...” Even her telepathic voice sounded winded. “I’m pretty sure he… peed himself while he’s in my mouth, and I really don’t need that in my life right now. What I need is sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.”
“You sleep as long as you need.” I looked back to make sure Vash was alright. “We have to plan our next steps.”
“Karalti! Let me go! KARALTI!” Suri's voice pealed out from below. “Get your bloody paws off me and throw that miserable little limp-dicked mongrel down where I can get him!”
I sighed, rubbed my eyes, and slid down to the ground. “Can you drop Suri first? Hold on to Jacob for a bit while I talk some sense into her.”
Suri was still covered in blood and dirt, her hair a wild muddy mop hanging over one eye. Karalti dropped her with a heavy 'clang'. When she stood up, she began to pace underneath the dragon's chest, staring up at Jacob with the same crazed expression Cutthroat got when she spotted a rat in the barn.
“Suri, hear me out.” I held my hands up as I drew up beside her. “We need him alive. If you kill him, he’ll respawn in Dalim and we’ll never see him again. Let's throw him in the dungeons. They still work.”
“Work?” She paused pacing and faced me. “Work how?”
“Work, as in, if we officially imprison him, he can't P.M his buddy, teleport out, or do much of anything.” I fixed her a hard look. “Davri's dead. And she didn't tell us where we could find Sachara's Tomb.”
Suri had some self-control issues, but she wasn’t stupid. Her jaw worked for a moment, then she craned her head up to look at the man hanging limply from Karalti's jaws. “Right. But we need someone higher level than him to guard him.”
“I can do it,” Vash said, hopping down to the ground beside me. “And no, I won't lose my temper with him if he sits on a cockroach. Everything you saw in Dalim was an act.”
“Even the fly?” I asked.
“Especially the fly. That customs official was about to rob us blind,” he said. “I'm guessing this pathetic creature is one of the Wardens you told me about?”
Suri nodded. “Yeah. Same arseholes. Nicolas got away. I wish we'd caught him instead of the Rat. The Giant was the worse of the two, easily. I’ve dreamed about popping that guy’s head off his neck like a cork for months now.”
“As would I.” Vash cocked his head to the side in thought. “You know, though, that of the pair of them, this one might be more... personable. You know? Capable of being persuaded.”
“Voivode Rule Number Two,” I said. “Torture is not allowed in Kalla Sahasi.”
Vash scoffed. “I wasn't talking about torture, you numbnuts. Torture is the recourse of losers. I’m talking about interrogation, which is an entirely different art. Here's what we do: we give him an initial interview, and see how he responds. Regardless of whether he clenches up or spills his innards, we leave him alone for, say, a week. No talk, no contact, no yelling. Just stony, perfect silence as his food is put through the door, his chamberpot emptied, the hall outside his cell is swept. I think you'll find that after the third or fourth day, he'll try and engage with anyone he knows is sitting outside the door. We could learn all kinds of things.”
“Uncomfortable, but not extreme,” I replied. “I like it. Suri?”
She struggled inwardly, clenching and unclenching her jaw. After a minute or so, she turned away from us.
“I'm going to go train with Kitti for a while,” she said, her voice taut with suppressed rage. “Teach the girl how to defend herself. You guys talk to Jacob. If I have to listen to him, I'll rip his fuckin' jaw off.”
I looked to Vash. “Does gelding count as torture?”
The monk shrugged. “Only if you don't use anesthetic.”
Suri sniffed, chuckled, then stepped forward and wrapped me into a tight, stiff hug. I kissed her on the side of the head. She hugged Vash, next, thumping him on the back, then went to Karalti and clapped her on the calf before slumping off toward the castle.
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. “Phew. That went better than I thought it would.”
“She's changing,” Vash said, his brows knitting. “She's learning more control. But she's hurting, Dragozin. She's hurting a lot.”
“That’s a shame,” Mehkhet murmured.
“I know.” I thought back to Karalti urgently straddling my hips, her hair spilling like a fragrant curtain over my face, and a pang of guilt twisted like a knife in my gut. “She wiggled out of sharing a room our last night here. I won't let her do that tonight.”
“Don't. She needs you.” Vash heaved a deep sigh. “Anyway, shall we take our new guest on a brisk drag to the dungeons?”
“We shall.” I laid a hand on Karalti's leg. “Tidbit?”
“Hmm?” She swivelled her head around like an eagle, Jacob flopping limply between the points of her teeth.
“Release the prisoner!” I proclaimed.
She giggled, and spat the man to the ground. “Phooey!”
“Ugghhhn.” Jacob landed awkwardly, tumbling over on the flagstones. His HP ring was pulsing red. By the look of things, he had, indeed, pissed himself. He was also covered in dirt and dragon drool.
“You're lucky you didn't Strange, you piece of shit.” I put a boot to his shoulder and pushed him onto his face, took out some rope, and made up some cuffs with it. “Welcome to sunny Myszno. As Voivode, I'm hereby arresting your ass for the crime of conspiring to assassinate the Countess.”
“Countess...? ACK!” He froze as Vash rested the toe of his heavy cleated boot on the side of his head.
“That's right. Countess.” As I finished knotting the ropes, something interesting happened. I got a notification of a kind I’d never seen before.
[With the authority of the Volod of Vlachia, you have arrested Jacob Ratzinger. Jacob's status is now Prisoner [Kalla Sahasi]. You may access his Inventory.]
“Awesome,” I said aloud. “Let's see here...”
I focused on Jacob and got a wheel of options. One was to submit an arrest report to Ignas, in case we wanted to stage a proper trial. Given he'd admitted to hiring an assassin, there was some merit to that. I would
bet Ignas had some nifty Super NPC powers when it came to dealing with player crimes. One of the other options was his Inventory, so I made a tag in MY Inventory - 'Jacob's Stuff', then went in and stripped everything. And there was a lot. The dude was loaded.
● Bluecrystal Mana x 5
● Greencrystal Mana x10
● Red Mana Stone x1
● 500,000 Dakhari dinar
● Spellglove of the Angelus (Broken)
● Arch-Magus Robes (Broken)
● Boots of Haste
“Hey! Stop! That’s mine!” Jacob finally began to struggle, blubbering into the dirt.
“Shut up.” When he was stripped down to his underwear, I turned him over and squatted over his chest. He flushed red as I grabbed his jaw and squeezed until his mouth opened, and made strangled sounds of protest as I ran my fingers over his gums.
“M'NARR!” His eyes widened. “Wha ar you do'in!?”
“Searching for lockpicks.” I checked his back teeth, looking for false crowns or hidden razors. “Probably doesn't have anything in the old prison pocket, though. Hey Jacob - you shove anything up your ass recently?”
“Whah?! NUH!?” he sputtered.
“Good man.” I stood up, hooked him under one elbow, and hauled him to his feet.
“You've done this before,” Vash remarked in Tuun, taking position on the other side.
I grimaced. “Too many times.”
The fight seemed to leave Jacob as we half-walked, half-dragged him to the dungeons, passed through the entry, and maneuvered him down the stairs. I'd only been to my dungeon once before. It was weird to think that I had a dungeon of my own now: I'd been a prisoner down here, kind of, closed into a box of sand after Ashur the Demon tried to vampirize me. The air down here was thick with the smell of old rot and mildew. There was one large-ish room at the back that was almost like a crypt, and a row of three cells. We took him to the back. It might have been the interrogation room once, but now the room stored several ornate stone sarcophagi. Each coffin was full of Napath desert sand. Once the door was locked, Vash and I threw Jacob on the floor.
“P-Please!” he squeaked, backing up along the floor like an inchworm. “Don't hurt me! I never wanted to do it! I never wanted any of it! It was all Nicolas! He was-”
Before he could finish, I kicked him square in the balls. He cut off with a little wheeze before crumpling forward.
Vash arched an eyebrow. “I thought you said 'no torture?'“
“I’m not trying to get information out of him.” I watched the man weep and writhe on the floor. “There are two - and only two - exceptions to the 'never hit a bro in the nads' rule. I've been wanting to do that “That was for Suri.”
While Vash chuckled, I crouched down in front of Jacob and smacked his cheek to draw his attention back to me. He pulled his head back, preparing to spit.
I grabbed him by the jaw, keeping them shut, this time. “Rule one. You spit at me even once, and I’m going to cut your balls off. It’s taking me an effort of will to not do it already. You understand me?”
“Mm-hmm!” Jacob shrunk back, his hands jammed between his legs.
I let go of his mouth with a shove.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he whined. “When the Admins find out what you’re doing-!”
“We haven’t seen an Admin in three months. As for what you did wrong, we heard the way you talked to Suri in Dalim. I read your journals in Al-Asad. You aren't fooling anyone, least of all me. You know exactly what you did to deserve this. You just never thought you'd get caught.”
“She’s an NPC.” He glared at me with one eye, shaking with pain and petulant rage. “A fake person. As in, not real. And even if she is, she’s a crazy bitch. You saw her!”
“That ‘crazy bitch’ is the Countess of Myszno,” I replied. “And I’m the Count.”
He laughed nervously, staring at me in disbelief. “You’re fucking her? Dude, she’s not even human. She’s some data that we uploaded that got player privileges, somehow.”
“We’re all ‘some data someone uploaded’ here.” I stared back at him, unflinching. Jacob wasn't the worst person I'd ever seen in this position, but he was up there. “What’s your point?”
He spat. “Her data is from the Pacific Alliance!”
“So?” I said. “How does that make her not human?”
“I just told you! She's from the Pacific Alliance! They’re animals!”
“Ah, yes, I remember when I was deployed to Indonesia to go fight the cats and dogs threatening the UNAC.” I said. “What kind of animal are we talking about here? Frogs? Horses?”
He blanched. “YOU were... you fought them?”
“Private First Class, 72nd Battalion,” I said. “Five years, three tours, and only two rotations.”
Jacob's big brown eyes grew even wider. “A conscript?”
“Yeah. Like almost everyone other than draft-dodging creeps like you.”
He shook his head, struggling to sit upright. “No no no! I-I wasn't conscripted. I-I had an essential j-job. My brother, Jeremy... my brother was in the 72nd.”
He trailed off on the last words, and looked down.
“So?” I said.
“They murdered him,” he muttered. “The Pacific Alliance captured Jeremy's unit. He died in a POW camp. Tortured to death.”
“So you think it’s okay to torture captured people as long as they’re not your family? Got it.”
“She was one of them,” Jacob said sullenly.
“One of the soldiers who tortured your brother?”
“How the hell would I know!” He scowled. “I don't know! Maybe she was! She wasn't even human... she was something they bred in a lab. That's what Nick said, anyway.”
I shook my head. “You have no way of knowing that.”
“Nick knows.” Jacob wouldn't meet my eyes now. He looked everywhere but me and Vash. “Nick was a conscript, too. He worked in some I.T. intelligence role in Alaska, and while he was there, he ripped copies of some POW test data. He said that soldiers had found a huge archive of rips in one of the death camps they seized. Most of it was from our side, you know, the UNAC. But some of them were rips from Pacific Alliance soldiers. They use… used… them, for a whole bunch of different experiments.”
Damn. The military kept some nasty secrets, but... “Why the fuck would Nicolas risk something like that?”
“That dataset was used for like... testing V.R. interrogation algorithms and shit. He got a copy of it because, umm...”
I tapped a foot.
“Because it was one of the toughest datasets in the tests,” he admitted. “And he was b-bored. He’s had a lot of different playmates in Al-Asad, so he wanted a challenge. So he like... cleaned the data... and combined it with a clone of that bitch queen character, Sachara. H-He was a S-Senior Dev and we were p-part of the ATHENA Team, the character database team, so he tweaked Suri's data so she'd be like, you know...”
I shook my head and raised my eyebrows at him.
“Sexy,” he admitted.
Vash drew a sharp breath and turned away to mask his disgust. I didn't bother.
“Nick's a psycho, man.” Jacob licked his lip. His face was covered in sweat, and his nose ran freely. “You don't know how much of a psycho he is. He stole the brain rips because he really doesn't give a fuck about anyone or anything. He cached those P.K weapons. They’re like a temp admin thing, something we used during alpha testing to create ghost characters and then delete them off the map. When he told me about this, I-I didn't know he’d use them on Suri-”
“Bullshit.” I looked down at him. “You had some fucked-up fantasy you wanted to act out, so you convinced yourself Suri isn't a real human being and tried to get rid of her so you could pretend there were no consequences. Well, they do. She doesn't remember Earth, or anything she might have done during the War. But she sure as hell remembers you, and she's going to have to live with that for the rest of her life.”
“She
's not real,” he muttered. “None of this is real. I-It's just a-”
Vash strode up and planted his boot right between his legs a second time.
“ARRGH! What the- IEEEEE!” Jacob screamed as Vash ground the cleats in, hard.
“Certainly feels real to me,” the monk remarked, pushing back. “What do you think?”
Jacob shrimped up, then retched onto the flagstones.
“The day I start caring about your sob story is the day you work out that Suri is a real human being.” I crouched down again, slapping his hand away from his face as he tried to cover it. “Archemi is the only world we have now, and I assure you that you're going to be spending a really, really long time in my dungeon thinking about it. Do you understand me?”
He sniffed, eyes watering. “Just wait until I get access to the admin panel. I'll... I'll fucking delete you!”
“You won't get access to the admin panel,” I said. “The A.I is so desperate that it’s started to send reports to players, because it can’t connect to anyone outside. Even if Dev permissions became available again, the ghost of Ororgael will be on that panel faster than you can say 'I'm a piece of shit' and if he does, we’re all fucked. You are my least concern right now.”
“Michael...?” He frowned. “No way. Michael's dead.”
“Michael's very much alive. He's basically human cancer.”
Jacob shuddered. “Dude. Too real.”
“As Ororgael, Michael’s infected at least one player so that he can try to take over the world. Again.” I bobbed up to my feet and began to pace. “Baldr Hyland. Sound familiar?”
“Yeah, but...” Jacob trailed off. “But we cleaned Michael's characters out of the database…”
I looked down at him. “I'm done talking with you. You're like the human incarnation of used mouthwash. I have to go find my girlfriend and comfort her.”
“Girlfriend?” Jacob regarded me with naked astonishment. “You really are with her? But... she's...”
Warsinger Page 38